Many of today's products sold in liquid form, such as liquid hand soap, are contained in disposable containers or reservoirs which incorporate a pump assembly. Typically, the pump assembly includes a reciprocally movable element which when moved dispenses a quantity of liquid soap from the reservoir. The reservoirs are generally fitted within a permanent housing which includes a movable actuator assembly which engages and reciprocally moves the movable element to dispense the fluid. This has been found to be both a convenient and economical means of fluid supply and dispensation. Since the fluid reservoirs are replaced once the fluid supply is exhausted, it is desirable to manufacture the dispenser and reservoir so as to make replacement of the fluid reservoir as easy and quick as possible.
Known fluid dispensers suffer the disadvantage in that replacement of the fluid reservoir is time consuming, as care must be taken to ensure the reservoir is placed in the permanent housing in the correct dispensing position to dispense fluids. If the reservoir is not placed in the correct dispensing position with the movable element coupled to the actuator assembly, the dispenser will be inoperative as the movement of the actuator assembly will not reciprocally move the movable element and no fluids will be dispensed. To achieve the proper dispensing configuration, the pump assembly must therefore be precisely aligned in the housing to ensure it is properly secured in or coupled to the actuator assembly.
Many known fluid dispensers suffer the further disadvantage in that to secure or couple the pump assembly to the actuator assembly of the housing, an adjustment of the position of the reciprocally movable element is often required.
Known fluid dispensers adapted to permit simplified replacement of the liquid soap dispenser provide for resilient fingers carried on the housing for complementary engagement with an engagement flange on the piston of a piston pump. The present inventors have appreciated that such arrangements suffer the disadvantage that the resilient members permanently on the housing must last the lifetime of the housing and, therefore, must be able to retain their resiliency for an extended period of time. While such resilient members may be made of resilient metal, they suffer the disadvantage that typically they are required to be separate parts for assembly at increased expense. Providing the resilient fingers to be of plastic has the disadvantage of requiring a plastic which will withstand its desired resiliency over a large number of cycles.